Does anyone have any cool ideas for determining first round draft order? I am commissioner of a new start-up league and would like to come up with a fun way to determine the order, something other than a random number generator. The owners in my league are spread out all over the country so any ideas cannot involve meeting locally. I am thinking about holding an NFL mock draft contest over e-mail to determine the order. Has anyone else done anything like this?

You can make a little movie/youtube video of the process and announce the order that way. You can keep it as simple or complicated as you want but more importantly have fun with it. I included two examples.

First of all, don't make it for draft order - make it for PICKING draft order. There are always guys that think "after the top 3 picks, I would rather take 10 or 11" kind of strategies. This turns even a dice-roll into just the mechanism while the real game and strategy come in the choosing phase. I am in two leagues that pick draft position and I love it - really changes how you mock and prepare.

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Start with a Secret Santa type setup for TEAM naming - Joe names Dave's team, Scott names Andy's etc. Keep it clean and SFW, but otherwise make it personal! For example, when we were 14 a buddy of mine crashed his moped into a barn. I might name his team Broad Siders.

After all names are determined, everyone votes on the best JOB of naming their buddy. Votes go 1-11 (can't vote for yourself) and tally them up Heisman-style. Guy with highest score gets to choose position and on down the line.

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If you are gamers roll a 12 sider - highest roll in round 1 picks order first, highest roll in round 2 picks order second, etc.

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Have a hold-'em tournament.

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Play 3 games of Risk/Monopoly/whatever online free game with 4 players each. 3 winners play another game for choices 1-3, 3 seconds play a game for choices 4-6, etc.

This won't really help you for this season, but in my league, we always setup a Losers bracket for teams that don't make the playoffs. These teams all play each other for drafting priority the next season. So the person who wins the losers bracket gets the first pick, the runner up is second and so on.

For the teams that do make the playoffs we use their playoff success to determine the bottom half of the draft order, so our league champ drafts last, 2nd place team drafts 2nd to last, etc, etc.

The good part about this system is it still gives teams out of the playoffs something to play for the last few weeks of the season, where they normally would not pay as much attention and it's a pretty fair system as results determine the order and nothing about is random/chance.

This won't really help you for this season, but in my league, we always setup a Losers bracket for teams that don't make the playoffs. These teams all play each other for drafting priority the next season. So the person who wins the losers bracket gets the first pick, the runner up is second and so on.

For the teams that do make the playoffs we use their playoff success to determine the bottom half of the draft order, so our league champ drafts last, 2nd place team drafts 2nd to last, etc, etc.

The good part about this system is it still gives teams out of the playoffs something to play for the last few weeks of the season, where they normally would not pay as much attention and it's a pretty fair system as results determine the order and nothing about is random/chance.

This is exactly what we do. Toilet Bowl bracket is the worse 6 teams to determine picks #1-6, winner gets #1 and so forth. Top 6 teams go to the playoff bracket with the league champ getting pick #12, runner up #11 and so forth. And as you say, it keeps all teams involved to at least week 15 and 8 teams still playing a meaningful game the final week (16). It's also funny (and great) to see the worst teams fight it out with the best for free agents in week 15. Keeps everyone involved.

Do *NOT* look at the boxscores on nfl.com They are known to be unreliable and rarely updated. You should be looking at the GameBook for the game for the most "official" stats that are available to the public.

Also as noted live scoring on MFL is not official and often defensive stats are delayed. Once the final stats are out early Tuesday after the Monday night game then see what happens.